Tanner did not answer.
“I am doing what’s right. Aren’t I?”
“Go toward the flames, sister. All your answers are there.”
Brittney lowered her arm to her side. It seemed strange, somehow. All of it. All of it so very strange.
She had burrowed up through the wet dirt. How long? Forever and ever. She had burrowed like a mole. Blind. Like a mole. No. Like an earthworm.
Tanner began chanting in a singsong voice. An eerie poem that Brittney remembered from so very long ago. A class assignment, a thing memorized and quickly forgotten.
But it was still buried in her memory. And now it came from Tanner’s mouth, his dead mouth gaping with black-edge fire dribbling like magma.
But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs…
Tanner smiled a ghastly smile and said, “In human gore imbued.”
“Why are you saying that? You’re scaring me, Tanner.”
“Not for long, sister,” Tanner said. Soon you will understand the Lord’s will.”
Justin woke suddenly. He immediately rolled to on
e side and felt the spot where he’d been sleeping. Dry!
See? He’d been right all along. He didn’t wet this bed.
But just to be safe he should run out to the backyard and pee because he could feel a little pressure. He was wearing his same old pajamas; they’d been in his same old drawer. They were so soft because they were still from the old days. His mommy had washed these pajamas and made them all soft.
The floor was cold under his bare feet. He hadn’t been able to find his old slippers. Roger had even helped him look. The Artful Roger was nice. The only new thing in this room was a picture Roger had colored for him. It showed a happy Justin with his mommy and daddy and a ham with sweet potatoes and cookies. It was taped on Justin’s wall.
Roger had also found the picture album for him. It was downstairs in the cupboard in the dining room. It was full of pictures of Justin and his family and his old friends.
Now it was under Justin’s bed. It made him feel pretty sad looking at it.
Justin crept down the stairs so he wouldn’t wake up Roger.
The old toilets didn’t work anymore. People all peed and did number two in holes in their backyards. No big deal. But it was scary going out at night. Justin was scared the coyotes would come back.
It was easier than usual to find the hole. It was kind of light out, a flickery orange light.
And it wasn’t quiet like it usually was. He could hear kids yelling. And it sounded like someone dropped a glass and broke it. And then he heard someone screaming, so he ran back in the house.
He stopped, amazed. The living room was burning.
He could feel the heat. Smoke was pouring out of the living room, swooping up the stairs.